As a kid, I used to love it when Dad got his old globe out. My siblings and I would spin it fast on its tilted axis, stop it and search for the familiar parts: where we were born, where we’d lived, where our relatives were, and the states and capitals of Australia (which we’d learnt by heart after moving here from New Zealand). Then we’d look at the strange names filling the rest: the hundreds of countries and cities spreading far from the tiny speck that represented our location.
Family holidays were always to places just a few hours’ drive away, places that didn’t seem all that different to home. I’m not sure when the travel bug bit me, but I remember taking notes on tropical destinations featured in the TV show Getaway around age 10, and learning about the francophone countries all around the world in high school French classes. When the opportunity to host an exchange student from Réunion Island came up in year 9, I begged my parents to do it – and a few months later I was headed to stay with her family as the youngest student from my school on the return trip. The landscapes, the language, the culture, the food: everything was endlessly fascinating. I knew then that travel had to be a priority in my life.
I headed to uni and fed my love of languages and culture by taking French, Linguistics, German and European Studies, saving as much as I could from part-time work to go on exchange for a semester. I ended up in Lille, right in the north of France – an area with a reputation for being dull and rainy, but which is actually charming and perfectly situated at the crossroads of Paris, London and Brussels. It was nerve-wracking to go so far away for so long all alone – on one of my first nights there, I remember thinking that it wasn’t too late to just turn around and go home! But after settling into my student accommodation and starting classes, I never looked back. Six months passed in a flash, with day trips and short breaks squeezed in wherever possible, and several weeks at the end spent exploring the vastly varied regions of France, marvelling at how much culture, history, food, wine and beauty one country could hold.
After a bad case of reverse culture shock on return, I gradually found a new appreciation of my home in Perth and those childhood holiday locations in the southwest. Having been further afield, my eyes were opened to the high standard of living and natural beauty that abounds here, and I committed to exploring Australia as well as destinations further afield.
Fast-forward a few years and I’ve found my way into a career in communications, with every moment of leave being used to explore new destinations or revisit old favourites.
This website represents the combination of my passions and a way to put some of the thousands of photos on my hard drive and hundreds of stories in my memory to use.
Here I’ll share stories from my travels to date – in Australia, France, Mauritius, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain and the UK, to name a few – and future adventures (my ever-growing bucket list will show you what’s on my radar). I’ll also share occasional musings on world issues, language learning, and other travel-related topics.
So, welcome. I hope you’ll find something entertaining or educational here. Have a look around and drop a message in the comments to let me know what you think!